Salt’s specialisms in testing & QA

Latest trends in the testing & QA sector

Testing / QA Engineer – Entry level
£25,000 - £38,000

Testing / QA Engineer – Mid-Weight
£38,000 - £55,000

Testing / QA Engineer – Senior
£55,000+

Demand Vs Offer

The development of multiple web and mobile applications has not only provided advantages (e.g. the usage of applications on the go) to consumers but it has also increased the demand for testing and QA specialists in companies all across the United Kingdom. Fortunately, there is no skill shortage within this sector and specialists for testing & QA jobs can be found quickly.

Locations

• London area
• South East
• North West

Popular Industries

Most positions in QA and testing are offered by technical industries, including engineering, IT, telecommunications, construction and manufacturing. The roles are likely to be full-time and on a contract basis. Those few positions which are on a permanent basis, usually offer lower salaries.

Recent Changes

One of the biggest changes in the testing and QA job is the shift from manual to automated testing. Due to this change, professionals in the field are expected to master various automation tools. Since every single tool has a particular purpose, engineers need to acquire a lot of knowledge about them, such as the ability to write scripts.

Future Prospects

The career progression for test & QA engineers can be very rapid. The best way to get to the top is to gain as much work experience as possible, keep yourself up-to-date about the latest testing methods and systems and try to get some industry specific qualifications. The salaries in within this sector can be really high, particularly in the London area. The only disadvantage is that the time before project deadline can be really stressful and it might be required to work overtime.

Salt’s advice for getting a new testing & QA job

Employers’ Requirements:

Employers want three core skills from professionals in this field: prioritisation, inference and multi-tasking. Inference is the most important competency of a test & QA specialist as he or she always need to ask themselves: “What can I interfere from the project requirements?” Prioritisation is the second most important skill because test cases have to be regularly categorised in various priority buckets. Multi-tasking is another important quality of a test engineer as they are usually not only confronted with one issue but with several ones from different projects.

CV Requirements

A test engineer’s CV should assure hiring managers that the applicant has robust coding skills and is an expert in troubleshooting. The latter is extremely important because test engineers are expected on a daily basis to find the root cause to a problem so that the problem cannot only be solved for one particular scenario but for all situations which follow a certain pattern. Furthermore, you should make clear on your CV that you have the bigger picture in mind as developers often focus so much on the development process that they might oversee the big picture.

Interview Preparation

According to the majority of testing and QA professionals, their interviews consisted of a coding part and a couple of theoretical questions. Examples of the theoretical questions are listed below:
1) What is the main difference between validation and verification?
2) What is a frequent issue with software automation?
3) What is the main difference between release and build?
4) Could you please explain data driven testing?
5) Which tests would you conduct for web based applications?

Educational Requirements

To become a test & QA engineer you'll need a bachelor’s degree in engineering which is related to the field in which you would like to work. If you would like to work, for example, as a mobile testing engineer then you have to do a degree in mobile engineering. Some employers might also expect a master’s degree in the field that you would like to specialise in.

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